Gaijin might want to do something about the terrible quality of Air RB, since it’s their flagship gamemode.
I mean seriously, it’s TDM for fighters. Non-fighters have no place here. Maps are way too big for props, way too small for jets. There’s a 5 minute “loading screen” (braindead climbing, I mean I’m literally writing this as I climb). Runway AAA is ridiculous and drags matches out.
So much of this could be fixed. But would require some tweaking. So here’s a few improvements I thought of in 3 minutes. I’m sure you can do better so leave your thoughts in the comments.
→ Scrap BR being based on Average WR. Seriously. Have BR based on historicity and actual power. So what if some planes are easier if flown by newbies or more deadly against newbies? Let Zeroes and Spitfires crush new players until they learn to not try to dogfight them.
→ Multiple different runways and bases spread throughout the map. They are guarded by light AAA which can be destroyed easily. The runways themselves can be destroyed for large ticket rewards, with just a few bombs.
→ Add carrier runways in the water, which players with Naval Aircrafts can spawn in.
→ Max tickets achieved when no runways left standing.
→ Several different spawns available to pick from.
- Bomber/Escort - High Altitude Very Forward Air Spawn.
- Intercept - Medium Altitude Very Forward Air Spawn, ready to intercept a bomber.
- Fighter Squadron 1-2 - Low Altitude Forward Air Spawn, at different locations assuming take off from different runways.
- Naval Squadron - Medium Altitude Forward Air Spawn for Naval Aircraft.
→ Allow respawns at runways, but with a sizeable respawn timer that gets a lot larger per death. Starting a 1 minute death timer, increasing by 1 minute per death.
→ Allow players at runways to tweak their settings (change fuel amount, equip secondaries, change ammo belts). Since the game ends when runways are gone, it’d be helpful to equip secondary bombs mid-match on otherwise fighters (for those that can).
3 Likes
Actual power measured by who?
3 Likes
Stats versus stats, come on thats a gimme
So nothing changes since stats are already a balancing factor. 🛌
2 Likes
Not player stats, vehicle characteristics
And how do you compare different stats? Speed to turn rate? Turn rate to energy retention? Amount of guns or missiles to flying characteriztics? You would need a formula or a guy to decide that.
2 Likes
Already done. This has never been a thing in War Thunder.
Which has BRs based on a number of factors including…
I find the game set up to be terrible.Made for 9 year olds.I joined to play ARB but soon ditched it for GRB which is marginally more realistic.Rather than majestic squadrons attacking fleets of bombers you never see the same plane twice and the stupid idea of landing on an airstrip to capture it …jeez…
Yes from a game play perspective - No from the quality of the average pilot perspective.
As long as the mode is flooded with tankers with rather limited pilot skills, the match results are mostly determined how many tankers or PvE players were allocated to the teams. And i am not talking abourt flying skills, i talk about situational awareness, priority targets and selection of the right targets at the right point of time.
Any improvements without increasing the overall skill level may be suited to please experienced players, but the majority would still continue to doing their thing.
So either gaijin should provide mandatory tutorials or simply introduce or increase rewards for skillful actions like baiting (we had a proximity score in Air RB) so that there would be an incentive to improve.
If you look at the battle summary tables - the majority of RPs come from surviving the match - but most of the players don’t live that long.
And you recommend more airspawns for fighters to intercept them…and try to give bombers a purpose with airfield / runway kills. Looks counterproductive…
Agreed - imho they need some parameters to balance, but their current approach looks like a plain average. Even a slight adjustment to balance with median average or raw performance data would have great impact.
Agreed - and the set up was never really adjusted for the same amount of years.
This is an Air AB thing - not happening in Air RB.
And actually irl based - the airport Oslo-Fornebu was capture by landing Bf 110s…
This is worst suggestions/propositon/improvement I have ever seen
3 Likes
Saw a good idea recently. Tickets shouldn’t start full and go down, they should start at zero and then fill when players destroy ground targets.
The game doesn’t end until the time limit or until all players are killed - no AI ticket bleed prematurely ending matches. Whoever has more tickets at timeout wins. 30 minute game timer.
Maps should be made smaller for jets below 11.0 BR, and team sizes should be returned to 12v12 in jets. There is no reason for the massive chaos we have where the gameplay is based around twitch reflexes and situational awareness like an owl on crack. Prop maps should be returned to jets as well (rotation is extremely boring, no snow maps, missing tons of fun prop maps).
the reason sub-11.0 jet maps should be smaller is that it takes 2-3 minutes to get into combat, and 2-3 minutes to RTB when there is no reason. Most of the 7.0-9.0 jets are only competitive on min fuel, but you get less than 10 minutes min fuel, and spend 3-4 minutes of this doing nothing. Making the maps larger means that i sometimes spend more time going rtb than playing the game. There is no gameplay benefit to having larger maps when it is 16v16 - you get third-partied just as often.
I spend as much time doing nothing as i do in props, and get less gameplay. It’s honestly quite incredible.
Air RB is never not going to be TDM. The best thing they could do is reduce team size at the upper tiers, fix excessive ticket bleed on some maps, nerf airfield AAA for lower tier matches.
If you’re looking for something more strategic than simple TDM, Gaijin should add a separate Air RB Enduring Confrontation which would include longer match times, larger maps, respawning, rolling objectives, additional airfields, carrier groups that are sinkable, and possibly even helicopters closer to the front lines.
This would give a good mode for attackers/bombers to do PVE missions in whilst not taking the PVP element out of the game.
Calling for a massive change like not factoring BR’s into matchmaking is just never going to happen. Remember there are more modes relying on BRs than just Air.
2 Likes
Maps are actually too small for props, not too large, and create an imbalance between the different types of fighters. The ~4 minute or so distance between the runways of both teams is unrealistic and therefore unnaturally biases the meta and gameplay towards fast-climbing, good-turning fighters (cough cough like USSR’s/Russia’s cough cough Eastern Front meta cough cough) so energy fighters and turnfighters thrive at the expense of boom and zoom fighters. What we need in place is both the current Air RB model of quick TDM gameplay but also an Enduring Confrontation style mode (with more types of AI like recon planes, bombers, etc.) which will evenly distribute balance between all the different types of fighters at all altitudes and also give attackers and bombers a suitable role. This will satisfy the crowd that craves quick action but with realistic flight models as well as the crowd that wants a more traditional and historical WW2 experience.
1 Like
